Coalition 'relaunched' in Essex

After disastrous results in the local elections David Cameron and Nick Clegg have appeared together to highlight the coalition's achievements during its first two years. Today's speeches have been billed as a "relaunch" of the coalition.

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Speaking at a factory in Essex David Cameron told workers: "I believe the need for that coalition, two parties working together to solve the problems we have in our country, is as important and necessary today as it was two years ago".

We are different parties, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrat party, and we don't always agree.

But I would argue in the last two years, the Government has done a lot of things that needed to be done. We have cut the deficit, we have made difficult decisions about cutting some areas of public spending, about having to increase some taxes, because we inherited a situation where our budget deficit was bigger than that in Greece.

Although we might have had different views, we put them aside, we cut the deficit for the good of the economy.

Ed Miliband warned of a "crisis of politics" as he acknowledged that all politicians need to do more to win back people's trust.

Speaking in Harlow, Essex, where his party seized control in last week's council elections, he said he wanted to "reach out" to the more than two-thirds of voters who did not turn out to cast their ballot.

Pointing to figures showing that 71% of people in Harlow did not vote on Thursday, he said: "I want to reach out and understand why you don't trust any politicians, why you don't believe any of us can answer the questions that you are facing in your life."

Former Minister David Laws, who is now Nick Clegg's adviser, told BBC Radio 4 this morning that he thinks it is possible for the two parties to remain coherent and united and still keep their two identities.

You are always going to get in a coalition the people on the extreme edges of the parties, the right of the Conservative Party, the left of the Liberal Democrats, feeling uncomfortable about the process of coalition, the compromises that involves.

I think actually that process of letting each party breathe a bit is also important to giving coalitions the ability to last because if you have iron discipline, (under) which parts of parties cannot express themselves at all, that's not actually a stabilising force.